SURPRISE!!!

Anybody who knows me well, knows that I hate surprises. When my kids were born, I didn't know the gender of any of them, which drove me nuts. Consequently, they had to wear green or yellow clothing until the supply of neutral colored baby shower gift clothing was used up, while visions of pink or blue danced in my Mommy head. How FUN it would have been to be able to paint the nursery pink or to KNOW that splurging on the BLUE Dior diaper bag was ok, because I was having a boy. Expectant parents have the option of knowing the gender now, and that makes so much more sense.

Then there is the issue of surprise parties. DON'T EVEN GO THERE WITH ME ON THAT ONE. Here's typically how it goes: They plan a surprise party for you. They have the date booked weeks in advance, they sneak around and tell you lies, and go to great lengths to hide all the pending fun from you. For WHAT PURPOSE? So you'll be pissed off that the plans YOU made are cancelled, and they get to surprise you for 5 seconds? Doesn't make any sense to me. You are the only one who didn't get to anticipate the event, maybe buy a new outfit, get a great haircut, take time to do your make up just right.

A bunch of girls threw me a surprise party years ago. Since I didn't KNOW about the party, I had made a dentist appointment for the time and didn't mention it to anyone. When the friend, Martha, showed up to pick me up "for coffee", she had to track me down at the dentist's office. I was flat on my back, wearing a paper bib with spit on it, drooling like a hyena over a sheep's corpse, and she comes rolling into the dentist office. The dentist was a mutual friend, so he didn't mind. "Hey, Sue, do you want to go for coffee??" HUH? It was 6:30 pm and I would normally be going home to feed my husband and kids after my appointment. I said, "arrggh. msfft ung froo." (She probably took that to mean, "sure, when I'm finished here." What I was really saying with my mouth full of spit and dental instruments was "Are you fucking crazy? What are you doing here?" Whatever. When I was finished getting my tooth filled, I told her that I'd have to call Mike and tell him I'd be home later and I went off with her to a Mexican restaurant. That should have been my first clue right there. We have Starbucks, Gloria Jean's, Daily Grind, Natalie's, Seattle's Best....trust me, there is NO SHORTAGE of coffee joints in Orange County and she was bringing me to a Mexican Restaurant??? My so stupid. I remember thinking, "that's ok. At least nobody will know me here." I don't know what YOU wear to get a tooth filled, but I was wearing dirty sweat pants that I"d probably slept in, a well worn Root's tee shirt with dental spit and filling shavings all over the front of it. I had no make up on, and my mouth was still so frozen that I could only mumble my words, and I was drooling all over myself without even realizing it. My hair looked like I'd tried to fix the toaster, and failed, so I grabbed a baseball hat from under the seat of my car and stuck it on my head in an effort to at least hide the bed head. The hat said, "Beer Bitch" on the front of it and unbeknownst to me, had a hunk of hair-filled bubble gum stuck to the back of it, but I figured I wouldn't know anyone there, so whatever. I'd was as exhausted as the mom of three young kids would be and caffeine was looking pretty tempting right then.

Imagine my surprise when we walked in to the restaurant and 10 of the women from our church were sitting there like the cats who ate the canary, "SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!" Now you have to understand women in the OC. Public outings are a time to pull out all the Girl Stops. Their hair was perfect, Dior and Gucci and Chanel sunglasses perched effortlessly on the tops of their uber coiffed heads. Their make up was impeccable, everyone was wearing their favorite Tiffany jewellry and designer purses matched their Jimmy Choo shoes. "Surprise!" said Jenna, with freshly done manicure. "Surprise!" said Denise, with her fabulous sundress with the sweet heart neckline encrusted with Swarovski magic. "Surprise!", said Lorena, just back from her vacation home in Hawaii and looking refreshed and youthful and perfect -- everything that I wasn't. I thought to myself, "Surprise? SURPRISE????????????? Fucking right I"m surprised...." I was horrified. Here's the rub though: you aren't supposed to get mad when that sort of thing happens. You are supposed to be grateful to your friends for being so thoughtful as to throw a surprise party for your birthday. Well, I wrote the book on passive-aggressive behavior, so I'm not sure if I recognize it when I see it, OR, if I recognize it when it really isn't there, but I was ready to choke the bunch of them. I didn't have the option of picking out what to wear, doing my hair, looking forward to a dinner I didn''t have to cook myself. The reality was that I had eaten already, in anticipation of having a frozen mouth, and since I wasn't in any shape to be actually talking with swollen lips incapable of forming sensible words, I could only sit at the head of the table, feeling like a skunk at a fucking garden party, listening to all these beautiful people talking about how "they almost let it slip -- remember when I said...." To add insult to injury, Martha told everyone at the table how stupid I must be to not have realized what was going on when she showed up in the dentist's office. Right? Not only am I sitting there swollen, frozen, and ugly -- a pimple on the face of Orange County's most fabulous female humanity, I was stupid too! Needless to say, that was the event that solidified my feelings about surprise parties and my refusal to ever throw one for anybody. Ever. No matter what.

I said all of that to say this: Just say "no" to suprise parties. The next time you have to urge to "surprise" someone, at least consider the words of a fellow suprise hater who said this: I"m not much for surprises. Anticipation is more my thing. Anticipation lets you stretch things, build them up, shower properly in advance. Anticipation is a turkey in the oven, long pregnancies, the 12 days of Christmas, spring training. A surprise is one juicy bite, anticipation is a long, splendid feast.